


Asymmetry

by orphan_account



Series: Asymmetry [1]
Category: Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 06:41:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1418674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is true that they have always been inseparable. It is not true that this has necessarily been out of love; it is simply that they have never known anything else. They have never been around other children before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Asymmetry

**Author's Note:**

> I, erm, may have actually written this _before_ finishing the anime, so this is a backstory for the twins that is slightly different to the backstory given by the latter half of the show. Sorry! These two just hit me so hard, I couldn't wait to write about them. Hope you all enjoy the story anyway! ♥
> 
> Also, the underage warning I've put on this is really only for underage kissing. And even then it's not really a sexual sort of kissing...? In any case if that isn't your cup of tea, then please tread carefully ♥

On their way back home from their first day of school, Hikaru is silent.

They are holding hands. This is something they have always done. Hikaru’s fingers are slightly sticky – there had been some kind of jelly at lunch, Kaoru’s favourite, Hikaru had fed it to him by hand, nothing unusual in that, nothing they haven’t been doing all their lives, sharing a tray with their bodies pressed comfortably together and some boy had come up to them and thrown milk down both of their uniforms.

“Hikaru,” Kaoru says.

His brother is tense, no longer paying attention. Kaoru can feel some of that tension crawling up his own arm; the slow, simmering wave of shame. Something they have never experienced before in the context of each other.

Hikaru pulls his hand away.

\--

“Where do you think they’re going?”

Hikaru doesn’t even look up. He’s sprawled on the floor, all narrow lines and angles, staring moodily up at the ceiling. “Don’t know.”

“Maybe it’s France, again?”

“I told you already, Kaoru, I don’t know.”

Kaoru hovers at the window for a moment longer, fingers curled in the velvet drapes. Down in the courtyard their mother is in light summer silks, hair trailing, face half hidden beneath her giant hat. Still beautiful. He knows this, because all of the men who come visit say so. He thinks for a second that she is going to look up at him – something clenches high and thrilled in his stomach – but then the door of the car slams shut, the gravel spits, and they are gone.

“She’s not going to look back, you idiot,” Hikaru mumbles. He sounds bored. “You never learn.”

“I’m not the idiot. What are you doing, anyway?”

“Nothing. Duh.”

“You’re going to catch a cold, lying on the floor like that.”

Hikaru turns his head and glares. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

“You’re being weird,” Kaoru says. When he moves to his brother’s side, dropping down to sit next to him, something tight goes into Hikaru’s shoulders. “Want to tell me what – ”

“Go away.”

Kaoru stares. The words ring softly in their father’s dark study, cold and new and terrible.

Hikaru turns away, carefully presenting his back. “You heard me. Go away.”

“Why?”

“I’m tired of being around you all the time.”

It is true that they have always been inseparable. One bed. One shower. Two chairs, but a single desk. It is not true that this has necessarily been out of love; it is simply that they have never known anything else. They have never been around other children before. 

“Go away,” Hikaru says, so Kaoru goes.

\--

The first time Kaoru had gone into his mother’s bedroom without asking, there had been a man.

He had stood in the doorway, perplexed by the noises coming from his mother’s bed. His father had long since moved to a separate room. In the dim light something was writhing underneath the covers, snake-like and horrible, an unfamiliar thing that frightened him. Even as a child he’d recognised taboo; from that night on he’d begun to notice the subtle things, the fact that nobody in the house would speak about what was happening, the raised voices at night drowned out by the radio, the smashed mirrors, his father leaving again. 

He’d sat by Hikaru’s damp body in the lamplight, dabbing a wet cloth across his face.

“Where’s Mother?” Hikaru had asked him.

“Not here. I’m sorry. I couldn’t find her.”

“Don’t go,” Hikaru had whispered then. Skin burning. Gold eyes feverish, hot. “Please.”

“Of course I’m not going to go.”

For reassurance Kaoru had kissed him on the mouth: just once, firm and very childish, their ancient way of making a promise.

\--

“Move over.”

A shape, bent over in the darkness. Kaoru isn’t even on Hikaru’s side of the bed; out of habit he had kept only to his own half, an imaginary line drawn across the sheet.

Earlier, Hikaru had wedged his pillow beneath one arm and said, _I’m going to sleep elsewhere._

In the pitch black it is impossible to make out Hikaru’s face. This isn’t like one of their usual quarrels, a few hot barbs patched up with a punch or a kiss. This is something deeper. Kaoru listens to the small, shuffling sound of Hikaru settling properly into the bed, whacking the pillow back into an acceptable shape, the clean smell of linen and soap and boy.

The silence blankets them for a moment.

Then without shifting, Hikaru says, “Why did he call us that?”

The humiliation, the wet patch soaking into their shirts. That one word, screamed into their faces, a word they hadn’t even understood at the time.

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe that’s what we are.”

Kaoru chews absently on his lip. “Maybe.”

“Maybe that’s why father won’t come home. Why he doesn’t love us.”

Kaoru blinks. He has never considered this before. But it fits: their mother so very unhappy, their father halfway around the world. They don’t even take meals together any more as a family. Their mother is forever absent, forever off visiting or being visited. It is always just Hikaru and Kaoru and a stretch of empty chairs, accompanied by the silent hover of servants.

“I think,” Kaoru says, then stops.

“What?”

“I think we’re going to be sent to Japan. For school.”

He can feel Hikaru’s hand clenching into the sheets. “I hate school. And I hate Japan.”

“Do you hate me?”

“You?” There’s a short pause. Hikaru looks at him sideways, a gleaming white sliver of eye in the dark. “Maybe. Sometimes. Not right now.”

“I thought you’d maybe asked Claire to make you up your own room.”

“I did,” Hikaru says. “But I didn’t like it.”

Kaoru hesitates a moment. Then he breaches the invisible line on the mattress in order to rest his head on his brother’s chest. Normally something like this is nothing unusual, but tonight it takes all of his courage.

“Good,” he mumbles into Hikaru’s pyjama shirt. He waits, but he doesn’t get pushed away.

\--

In Japan they are self-conscious. They are bristly, aloof, stand-offish.

At first, they are a novelty: their identical shocks of bright red hair, their lilting accent. The downright ostentatiousness of their money. The additional fact that they are twins puts them on an almost magical level amongst the other students. They are whispered about, in a language they aren’t quite fluent in just yet, darting snatches of conversation that puts them on edge. 

They are careful not to stand too close in public. Not to watch each other. They battle the natural urge to walk in sync. This is a new place, unfamiliar territory, and they do not know their enemies yet.

It takes effort – a near-constant vigilance – for the two of them to stay separate.

\--

“You’ve got a – hold still.”

Hikaru flinches away on reflex, eyes darting around. They are alone. But they always check now, just in case. Slowly, Hikaru’s shoulders slump, the tension bleeding out of them as he sighs.

“Sorry. Thought I heard someone coming. What are you doing?”

“You’ve got something stuck in your hair.”

It’s a feather. Hikaru leans into Kaoru’s body as he extricates it, a solid, warm weight all up his side. It’s so familiar that Kaoru fusses about for longer than he has to, brushing his fingers carefully across Hikaru’s scalp; he can feel his brother slowly sinking into it. 

“I wish we didn’t have to pretend all the time,” Hikaru murmurs softly.

“Me too.”

“Oh. I got a note today.”

“Huh?” Kaoru says, distracted, slipping the feather into his pocket.

“From that girl in the second-last row,” Hikaru says. “You know. Braids. Slightly stupid look.” He leans away to rummage through his jacket, and Kaoru’s side feels suddenly cold. “Where is that stupid – here.”

“You read it to me, I can’t be bothered.”

Hikaru looks at him briefly, rolls his eyes. “Tch. Lazybones.”

Kaoru watches him as he reads. They are so close. The hours they spend each day without touching has made Kaoru tense, hypersensitive to every movement Hikaru makes: the precise tilt of his jaw, the direction in which he has turned his body, the long and casual sprawl of his legs. In the classroom Kaoru feels it as a shiver on the back of his neck, his attention always wandering. 

There’s a bruise on one of Hikaru’s knees. Until it fades, that will be the single thing that sets them apart. 

For some bizarre reason it makes Kaoru jealous.

Hikaru prods him abruptly in the ribs. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not.”

Kaoru reaches out and catches his chin. “I’m listening to you, I promise.”

It is Hikaru who closes the gap. They kiss, gently at first, then a little bit harder, because after this they won’t get the chance for a while. 

When Kaoru cracks open an eye to peek, he sees that Hikaru has crushed the girl’s note in one hand.

\--

It happens when they are in middle school.

They are halfway to their room when Kaoru pauses on the staircase. They are holding hands; Hikaru is dragged to a stop on the stair above, jolted out of the anecdote he’s telling. 

“Hey,” Hikaru begins, crossly, “what are – ”

“She’s here,” Kaoru says.

“What?”

“I can smell her perfume.”

They find her sitting on the edge of their single bed. In the slanting afternoon light she is almost diaphanous, almost something imaginary. Kaoru stares at her until his eyes adjust to the light; and then her features slowly emerge as if out of a dream, the dark, lovely, slanting eyes, the frail chin, the smooth and gentle tapering of her neck. Her hair is shorter now, and curled. She is smiling.

“Mother,” Kaoru says. He stutters over it a little, unused to the sound of it.

“Kaoru.” Her voice is still very soft; still exactly the way Kaoru remembers it. She reaches out to them. “Hikaru. My two beautiful boys.”

\--

There is something awful on Hikaru’s face, a bright and caustic fury Kaoru has never seen before. He flinches – Hikaru’s nails, where their hands are still joined, are biting into his palm.

“I can’t believe she came just to tell us _that_ ,” Hikaru says. Spitting it into the air.

“Hikaru – ”

“She never comes to see us. Never even phones us. Didn’t even see us off at the airport. Because of her, we’ve had to do everything ourselves.” Hikaru pulls his hand free, flops backward onto the bed. “And now she’s – going away. I hate her.”

“She told us why she’s leaving.”

“To be with a man. That’s a shitty reason.”

“Maybe she loves him.”

Hikaru snarls. “Well, she’s supposed to love us too, isn’t she? She tells us so all the time. I just hope that man she’s with doesn’t expect too much.”

Kaoru thinks for a while. He watches his brother, slanted haphazardly across the mattress where, moments before, their mother was sitting. Hikaru’s school blazer has fallen open. Kaoru reaches out, runs his fingers over the soft V beneath Hikaru’s bare throat; ever since they were children Hikaru has always been the first to retreat behind anger. To put up a swift, hard shield of denial.

“I don’t think you hate her,” Kaoru says. “If you did, you wouldn’t care so much.”

Hikaru turns away, hair falling forward to hide his eyes. “People are going to call her a whore.”

“Maybe.”

“How can she not care? How can she just – ”

“I think she does care about what people will say. But she cares more about something else.”

Hikaru says nothing for a long moment. 

His pulse thunders hard beneath Kaoru’s fingers. In a jolt of curiosity, Kaoru wonders what it would feel like if he put his mouth on it, ran the flat of his tongue across.

“You’re bleeding,” Hikaru says finally. He turns Kaoru’s hand over, nail-scored palm up. “Did I do this?”

 _Who else?_ Kaoru wants to say. _You’re the only one I ever let close enough._

\--

The next day at school, when Kaoru falls into step beside him, Hikaru stops and stares.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m walking,” Kaoru says. He can already feel his body tilting, hips shifting subconsciously into closer proximity to his brother. “Don’t do that, Hikaru, you’ll catch a fly.”

“But – ”

“Come on, we’ll be late for class.”

It’s dizzying, being able to do this in public; to give in to the natural rhythm they have, a symmetry nobody but they understand. They’ve spent this whole time underwater, Kaoru thinks. He looks up at the bright, spotless sky, pulls in a deep breath of air into his lungs.

There’s a darkening flush on the back of Hikaru’s neck. “Don’t stand so close. People are staring.”

“So what? They don’t understand.”

“We shouldn’t – ”

“They don’t know what any of it means.” Kaoru catches his brother’s hand, gets a panicked look in return. “They’ll see us holding hands and they’ll think it means something else. Whatever. _We_ know what it means, and that’s enough. If it feels right to us, I don’t see why we have to listen to all the other people trying to tell us that it’s wrong.”

“But it is wrong,” Hikaru hisses out of the side of his mouth. “We’re brothers.”

“I don’t care,” Kaoru says.

“You _should_ – ”

“I don’t.”

Hikaru stares at him.

Something in Kaoru’s body aches. In moments like this it is so very easy to tell them apart: behind his high walls Hikaru has always been more vulnerable, his heart more childish, more easily bruised. It takes some measure of self-awareness to recognise that loneliness is a choice; Hikaru has never been self-aware.

Kaoru leans in and kisses him on the cheek.

Almost instantly, as if magnetised, Hikaru lists towards him with a soft, choked-off sound. He breathes in the scent of Hikaru’s hair, his heart knocking thickly inside his chest: a lopsided rhythm, _I love, I love._

“I’m glad that Mother left,” Kaoru says at last. “I’m glad she had the courage to be happy.”

\--

“Why have you always got a feather in your blazer pocket?”

Kaoru rumbles a laugh. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re not keeping secrets from me, are you?”

“No, I promise.”

_The secret’s already out._

\--

The girl stands with her feet very close together, clutching an envelope nervously in one hand.

“Kaoru?” she says, timid. “I – I have – ”

“Oi,” Kaoru says. He digs an elbow into Hikaru’s ribs, still a very satisfying pastime, the two of them tangled together messily on the grass. “Oi, Kaoru, you lazybones. Someone here looking for you.”

Hikaru struggles upright. “Eh?”

“I – I have a letter here for Kaoru.”

Their eyes meet over the girl’s outstretched arm. There is a grin inching slowly across Hikaru’s face, which is the only way that Kaoru knows a matching grin is also inching across his own. 

Hikaru shifts forward and their ankles touch; a small shiver goes all the way up Kaoru’s spine.

They are comfortable with this, now. 

“Hand it over, then,” Hikaru says. He gives the girl his most winning smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Any and all feedback is much appreciated! For updates on any future fics, feel free to add me on [Tumblr](http://epistolica.tumblr.com), [LiveJournal](http://epistolic.livejournal.com), or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/#!/epistolic)! ♥


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